


An Interview in the Nandi County

by rebornlover



Series: Time Travel and Gender [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Female Character of Color, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 13:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17002629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebornlover/pseuds/rebornlover
Summary: A student on a time travel assignment interviews two women who were married in Nandi, Kenya in the 1980s





	An Interview in the Nandi County

I am not going to be born for 16 years. It is the only thought running through my mind as I sit in the back of the pick-up truck. It is 1980 and I am negative 16 years old, currently. It’s still hard to wrap my head around.

  
I double-check the pin I have pressed into my head scarf. The press of it on my fingers was a comforting weight. The pin is a must-have for anyone using the University’s time travel machine. It doesn’t make me invisible per se, but it does make me unremarkable. People acknowledge me only when I am speaking directly to them, and even then, their eyes pass over me as if I am one of the mamas from the fruits stalls we pass on the road. They are, generally, very helpful, however. I am anxious about the trip.

  
I had been wary about where I set my landing location, even with the pin I did not want to accidentally stumble onto the police or a military base or, god forbid, a crowded town centre so I tried my best to land in a cluster of trees within a forest by the research community mentioned in Oboler’s paper (Oboler 71). I just want to finish this trip and go back to school without erasing myself from the timeline. This trip has thee double advantage of keeping me away from both my currently teen-aged parents and allowing me to get more first-hand information about female-husbands. Two birds with one stone.

  
The village is… a village. Not my village but it carries the same general feeling. The houses are blocks of concrete with flat roofs. The dirt roads are dusty due to the dry season and there’s red dust on the hands and feet of the children who try and steal sweets from my hands as I bribe them to help me find the local appointed chieftain (Oboler 72). There are piles of concrete near unfinished houses still in the process of being built and there’s the sound of the radio drifting from a shop near. The announcers speak only Luo, but every now and then an English advertisement starts to play. My translator is holding up well, I can also understand the Kalenjin the children use as they try and persuade the sweets from my hands and, failing this, eventually lead me to the chieftain.

  
The chieftain is wearing a plain white shirt and brown trousers. He is a tall man, who listens calmly as I explain my research trip to him and show him the credentials I had printed before I left. They mark me as a student at Makerere University writing about traditional marriage practices in East Africa. I watch his face but there is no indication of any deep running feelings as he points me to the homes of several couples. Though he serves as the local chief and he is a part of the Nandi community I remember that his position is government appointed (Oboler 72). I wonder if he feels there is any conflict between the marriages of these women and the Government (and Churches) views on the immorality of same-sex relationships. I wonder what it means if he doesn’t (Morgan and Baraka 44-45).

  
I give Miriam and Patience the same story. I am polite and deferential, even Patience the younger is older than me by at least a decade. They are the first woman-to-woman couple to agree to speak with me. Their oldest son, Kabaza, is leaving as I arrive. Miriam sits with me in a living room with a low centre table and several of the large paisley couches I have managed to find in the house of every African grandmother I have ever visited. There are knitted covers hanging on each couch. As we are exchanging pleasantries Patience returns with some tea and biscuits for us to eat. I wonder about the fact that I am not invited to sit outside with Miriam, but I need to talk to both, so I conclude that is probably the reason.

  
I ask them how they got married and they explain to me.

  
Miriam was initially married to an older Luo gentleman. They had married when he was several years younger than I am now and he several years older. Kabaza refers to the man as his grandfather. The man ran the farm where they live currently but he and Miriam never managed to conceive a child. About a decade before he had been killed by a flash flood while travelling to visit his mother’s village. Miriam had consulted with his mother and made the decision to take on a wife as a means of safeguarding her inherited property rights (Njambi and O'Brien 8).

  
Patience, Miriam explains, had recently had a child out of wedlock. Patience and Kabaza had moved in with Miriam and been adopted into her family. I ask Miriam if she would have considered marrying Patience even if her husband had lived as they seemed to have been acquainted before this, if I remember correctly from my research the Luo was one of several other cultures that also practice ‘female husbandry’ in some form or another (Hobson, par. 3 ). Miriam looks fondly at Patience who smiles from her seat when she catches the glance. Miriam tells me that she is not sure, but she would be poorer from not having had Patience’s companionship.

  
I waver slightly here, I am a blunt person by nature, but we are currently edging around a possibly sensitive subject. Tommy boys, lesbian men and ancestral wives had demonstrated that woman-to-woman marriages could be considered distinct from lesbian relationships by the cultures that practiced them and Kenyan lesbians in the future (40-44). I am curious about the ways these women conceptualize their emotional relationship, but I am wary of upsetting them. In the book, the authors also claim that despite a wider traditional acceptance of the practice that the Church has issues with the practice, but I am wary to ask a question that might raise emotions enough to test the limits of my pin.

  
In the end I simply ask about their division of labour and their cultural duties. Miriam explains to me that she now attends the men’s initiation rights rather than the women’s’. That she spends her afternoons walking about and hires younger men to do the business of ploughing and such for her. Patience, when asked directly, responds that she does what all wives do including taking care of the children. I ask about Miriam’s role in the children’s lives and she explains to me the concept of corruption from the children and the aloof and distant roles all fathers, her included, play in their children’s lives.

  
I avoid asking about discipline. Oboler’s study seemed to indicate that wives of female husbands enjoyed slightly more freedom and slightly less risk of physical punishment that wives of regular men and I am loathe to break the assumption on my part when there is little I can do here anyway.

  
I finish my tea and thank them both for the interview. I have other houses to visit if I ever want to return to the University and while we’ve been talking the sun has already started its descent in the sky. As I round the corner of the bend I see in the corner of my eye, the way that Miriam let’s herself lean on Patience as they bend their heads close together but I pass quickly out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> Works Cited  
> Hobson, Janell. Queering History, Queering Africa. n.d. .  
> Morgan, Ruth and Nancy Baraka. "Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa." Morgan, Ruth and Saskia Wieringa. Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, 2005. 25-45.  
> Njambi, Wairimu Ngaruiya and William E. O'Brien. "Revisiting "Woman-Woman Marriage ": Notes on Gikuyu Women." NWSA (2000): 1-23.  
> Oboler, Regine Smith. "Is the Female Husband a Man? Woman/Woman Marriage among the Nandi of Kenya." Ethnology (1980): 69-88.  
> Zabus, Chantal. "Of Female Husbands and Boarding School Girls: Gender Bending in Unoma Azuah's Fiction." Research in African Literatures (2008): 93-107.


End file.
